Nederland heeft in New York samen met 100 landen hernieuwde afspraken gemaakt om wereldwijd meer grip te krijgen op migratie. Hierbij heeft Nederland gepleit voor meer terugkeer, het tegengaan van mensensmokkel, beter grensbeheer en aandacht voor innovatieve oplossingen zoals terugkeerhubs. Daarnaast heeft Minister Van den Brink samen met Syrië een bijeenkomst voorgezeten over het belang van terugkeer en wederopbouw.
Jon Krakauer writes about what has changed about climbing Mt. Everest since he wrote Into Thin Air. “The deadly hazards I wrote about attracted novice climbers to Everest like gamblers to a slot machine.”
DEN BOSCH (ANP) - Demonstranten die tegen de komst van een asielzoekerscentrum op het bedrijventerrein Engelen in Den Bosch zijn, blokkeren de A59 bij die stad. Dat bevestigt Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) na berichtgeving door Omroep Brabant. Doordat de groep demonstranten op het wegdek staat, heeft RWS besloten het verkeer van Den Bosch richting Waalwijk tegen te houden. Het is niet duidelijk hoeveel mensen er staan.
LAS PALMAS (ANP/AFP) - Het vliegtuig dat meewerkt aan de evacuatie van vermoedelijke hantapatiënten dat een tussenlanding moest maken op Gran Canaria kampt met technische problemen. Spaanse media melden op basis van regeringsbronnen dat een van de systemen aan boord niet goed bleek te werken. Het ministerie zegt tegen persbureau AFP dat er zelfs een nieuw vliegtuig nodig is voor het transport.
Twee vliegtuigen vertrokken met drie evacués vanuit Kaapverdië. Een van de twee vliegtuigen is inmiddels aangekomen op Schiphol. De ander moest uitwijken naar Gran Canaria om bij te tanken. Daarna bleek dat er ook problemen waren met een van de medische systemen, schrijft de krant El País op basis van bronnen bij het Spaanse ministerie van Volksgezondheid.
Het ministerie zegt tegen AFP dat het vliegtuig is aangesloten op de stroomvoorziening van de luchthaven in afwachting van een ander vliegtuig om de reis voort te zetten.
Reform UK leader has registered wide range of financial interests on top of his Commons salary since July 2024
Nigel Farage’s income since he was elected as an MP has now reached £2m on top of his parliamentary salary, analysis of the register of MPs has shown.
Farage’s earning power sets him alongside a small number of MPs who have been able to leverage their status for external income alongside their day jobs – drawing comparisons to Boris Johnson, who made about £5m on top of his MP’s salary in the six months after he resigned as prime minister.
Continue reading...Authorities allege that Omer Ziv and an unnamed air force major used classified information to bet on the timing of military operations on Polymarket
Since users of the leading prediction market Polymarket have been able to wager on the outcomes of war, fears have been raised that those betting on bombs falling from the sky may be privy to non-public information about military strikes. There has been much reported about suspicions of insider trading on war, but who exactly is believed to be placing these bets has remained unclear.
In February, Israeli authorities charged two suspects with committing security offences, bribery and obstruction of justice, alleging they used classified information to bet on the timing of military operations on Polymarket.
Continue reading...Video shows ‘looksmaxxing’ influencer shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades
A controversial social media influencer known as Clavicular is facing charges in connection with a live stream showing him shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades, local Florida media has reported.
Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters and is known for the practice of “looksmaxxing”, faces charges of unlawfully discharging a firearm in a public place or residential property, according to legal files obtained by television station ABC6 in South Florida. The charges stem from his alleged actions in a 26 March live stream.
Continue reading...
SergioQ79 - Osanpo Photographer - has added a photo to the pool:
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
Manju, onigiri e okowa fatti a mano in un piccolo negozio che sembra rimasto fermo nel tempo.
Niente confezioni perfette, niente marketing elegante.
Solo vetrine quasi vuote, fogli scritti a mano e qualcuno che continua a preparare cibo come ha sempre fatto.
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
時間が止まったような小さな店。
きれいな包装も、おしゃれな宣伝もない。
手書きの紙と少ない商品、それでも今も変わらず手作りを続けている。
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
Handmade manju, onigiri and okowa in a tiny shop that feels untouched by time.
No perfect packaging, no polished marketing.
Just half-empty displays, handwritten notes, and someone still preparing food the same way as always.
SergioQ79 - Osanpo Photographer - posted a photo:
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
Manju, onigiri e okowa fatti a mano in un piccolo negozio che sembra rimasto fermo nel tempo.
Niente confezioni perfette, niente marketing elegante.
Solo vetrine quasi vuote, fogli scritti a mano e qualcuno che continua a preparare cibo come ha sempre fatto.
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
時間が止まったような小さな店。
きれいな包装も、おしゃれな宣伝もない。
手書きの紙と少ない商品、それでも今も変わらず手作りを続けている。
おまんじゅう・おむすび・おこわ。
Handmade manju, onigiri and okowa in a tiny shop that feels untouched by time.
No perfect packaging, no polished marketing.
Just half-empty displays, handwritten notes, and someone still preparing food the same way as always.
De grote afwezige tijdens een hoorzitting van het Europees Parlement over AI-bedrijf Anthropic, vanwege grote zorgen over zijn model Mythos, was Anthropic zelf. Europa kan het AI-model niet zelf testen.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Silicon Valley investors such as Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel have bet hundreds of millions of dollars on deploying AI data centers powered by waves in the middle of the world's oceans -- a move that coincides with tech companies facing mounting challenges in building AI data center projects on land. The latest investment round of $140 million is intended to help the company Panthalassa complete a pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon, and speed up deployments of wave-riding "nodes" designed to generate electrical power, according to a May 4 press release. Instead of sending renewable energy to a land-based data center, the floating nodes would directly power onboard AI chips and transmit inference tokens representing the AI models' outputs to customers worldwide via satellite link.
Each node resembles a huge steel sphere bobbing on the water with a tube-like structure extending vertically down beneath the surface. The wave motions drive water upward through the tube into a pressurized reservoir, where it can be released to spin a turbine generator that produces renewable energy for the AI chips on board. Panthalassa claims the node's AI chips would also get cooled using the surrounding water, which could offer another advantage over traditional data centers. "Ocean-based compute might offer a massive cooling advantage because the ambient temperature is so low," Lee said. "Land-based data centers use a lot of electricity and fresh water for cooling."
The newest node prototype, called Ocean-3, is scheduled for testing in the northern Pacific Ocean later in 2026. The latest version reaches about 85 meters in length and would stand nearly as tall as London's Big Ben or New York City's Flatiron Building, according to the Financial Times. Panthalassa has already tested several earlier prototypes of the wave energy converter technology, including the Ocean-1 in 2021 and the Ocean-2 that underwent a three-week sea trial off the coast of Washington state in February 2024. The company's CEO and co-founder, Garth Sheldon-Coulson, said in a CBS interview that he hopes to eventually deploy thousands of the nodes.
Each node resembles a huge steel sphere bobbing on the water with a tube-like structure extending vertically down beneath the surface. The wave motions drive water upward through the tube into a pressurized reservoir, where it can be released to spin a turbine generator that produces renewable energy for the AI chips on board. Panthalassa claims the node's AI chips would also get cooled using the surrounding water, which could offer another advantage over traditional data centers. "Ocean-based compute might offer a massive cooling advantage because the ambient temperature is so low," Lee said. "Land-based data centers use a lot of electricity and fresh water for cooling."
The newest node prototype, called Ocean-3, is scheduled for testing in the northern Pacific Ocean later in 2026. The latest version reaches about 85 meters in length and would stand nearly as tall as London's Big Ben or New York City's Flatiron Building, according to the Financial Times. Panthalassa has already tested several earlier prototypes of the wave energy converter technology, including the Ocean-1 in 2021 and the Ocean-2 that underwent a three-week sea trial off the coast of Washington state in February 2024. The company's CEO and co-founder, Garth Sheldon-Coulson, said in a CBS interview that he hopes to eventually deploy thousands of the nodes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Elon Musk's SpaceX hopes to plow as much as $119 billion into the southeast Texas countryside to build a massive semiconductor fab to produce chips for orbital AI datacenters. We won't hold our breath. The harebrained scheme is part of Elon Musk’s recently announced Terafab project, which seeks to boost global semiconductor production by 50x. After all, how else is he supposed to lob a terawatt of compute a year into orbit? In a recent public filing, SpaceX described the project as a “multi-phase, next-generation, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing and advanced computing fabrication facility.” The facility would be located roughly 80 miles northeast of Houston near the Gibbons Creek Reservoir. The first phase of this project is expected to cost around $55 billion, or about 1.25 Twitters. For reference, Intel’s leading-edge fab expansion in Chandler, Arizona cost roughly $30 billion, but that facility pales in comparison to Musk’s ambitions. In addition to silicon used for compute, Musk claims Terafab will have all the equipment necessary to produce chips of any kind, and that includes memory. “In a single building, we can create a lithography mask, make the chip, test the chip, make another mask, and have an incredibly fast recursive loop for improving the chip design,” Musk boasted in a March presentation. That’s an ambitious plan from a man who has never run a fab before. SpaceX, which now includes Musk’s AI startup xAI and by extension the shriveled husk of the once great social network Twitter, knows an awful lot about building launch vehicles, satellites, bit barns, and web-scale applications. But last time we checked, the companies have zero semiconductor manufacturing experience. This knowledge gap doesn’t seem to have Musk all that worried, seeing as last month American foundry partner Intel just signed on to help out with the project. During Tesla’s most recent earnings call, the CEO revealed his Terafab manufacturing venture would produce chips based on Intel’s yet unfinished 14A process node. These chips will include homegrown AI accelerators - an area where Tesla, also part of the Terafab project, does have some experience, unlike chip manufacturing. Tesla has developed several generations of custom silicon to power its electric vehicles, as well as its fully custom Dojo supercomputing platform. So at least that bit is plausible. Of course, demand for these chips is predicated entirely on SpaceX’s Starship bringing down the cost to orbit to a level where orbital datacenters are economically viable, which still hasn’t happened yet. But seeing as it takes three to five years to bring a new fab online, SpaceX still has time to make its first truly reusable rocket… well, reusable. Musk has a history of making big promises and then not delivering on them. You might remember him promising to cut $2 trillion and then $1 trillion from government spending via DOGE, but only managing to cut about $150 billion or 2.2 percent. He has also predicted that SpaceX would send a rocket to Mars by 2024 and that Tesla would have a million robotaxis on the road by 2020. In the meantime, the Grimes County Court of Commissioners will consider whether to grant Musk’s Terafab project a property tax abatement during a meeting at 9 am on June 3. ®
A visit to Lincoln Park or the Garfield Park Conservatory is one of the outings Chicagoans rarely pass up, particularly when we need some reprieve from all the concrete and steel. Two beloved green spaces in the city, these spots boast oases blanketed in verdant foliage even in the depths of winter and house an array of specimens not native to the Midwest.
For artists Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez, the immersive nature of a conservancy, with plants above and below and all around, became a central point for a collaborative project. Your Birth is My Birth presents the duo’s synthetic hair sculptures, which suspend from the ceiling of Jane Lombard Gallery and splay across the wooden floor like organic growths. Alaka and Frésquez describe the exhibition as a sort of “Kanekalon forest,” referring to the brand behind the luscious material.
Five different “species” emerge in the space, including Listening Roots, Hearing Bells, Mother & Child, Stacking Pearls, and Umbra Pods. Dark, dyed locks and domed shapes are throughlines, although each takes on a distinctive form. The series are influenced by epiphytes, non-parasitic plants that make their homes on a host specimen. Think orchids, cacti, moss, and kelp.
Surging upward from lily pad-shaped discs suctioned to the floorboards, the largest sculpture is part of Listening Roots, which tethers singular shoots to a central form. This connection between smaller pieces—like the feather-duster-shaped Stacking Pearls—and more comprehensive structures recurs throughout the exhibition, gesturing toward an intimate and intentional symbiosis.
Several works also reference genetics and what’s passed down through generations, as mirrored forms emerge within the same vertical tendril. “Similar to an epiphyte and its host tree, these sculptural works have their own life cycles evoking systems of dependence and exchange, where one form sustains from another,” says a statement.
Your Birth is My Birth is on view through June 13. Explore more from Alaka and Frésquez on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Luscious Hair Sculptures Sprout Like Branches in a Symbiotic Exhibition appeared first on Colossal.